Book Discussions Archives - Page 30 of 31 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

A Problem with My Textbook

Writing any kind of book whatsoever is really difficult. But each *kind* of book is difficult in its own way. I tend to write three kinds of books: scholarly works for scholars (not for general consumption!); popular trade books for broader audiences of intelligent adults; and textbooks for college kids. As I’ve repeatedly said, I’m now finishing up my new textbook on the Bible for introductory level classes. The audience is, basically, American 19 and 20-year olds. And I’m finding it hard! There are several things that are just inherently hard for this kind of thing. It is hard to take something that can so easily be made dull and lifeless and make it interesting and even intriguing. It is hard to write at the right level so that the readers are treated like adults but not too much knowledge is assumed. It is hard to take complicated ideas and concepts and make them simple and understandable enough for 19-year-olds who may be having the first introduction to the subject matter ever. It is hard [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:53-04:00September 20th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Teaching Christianity|

Possibilities for the Afterlife

IN MY BIBLE INTRODUCTION, I INTRODUCE STUDENTS TO SOME OF THE OPTIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE AFTERLIFE, IN VIEW OF PAUL’S INSISTENCE IN 1 CORINTHIANS THAT THE FUTURE WILL INVOLVE A PHYSICAL RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD FOR ETERNAL LIFE – A VIEW NOT SHARED BY MANY OF HIS READERS, BOTH THEN AND NOW! ******************************************************************************************************************** Some interpreters have thought that Paul and his Corinthian opponents disagreed about the resurrection because they had fundamentally different understandings about the nature of human existence, both now and in the afterlife. Perhaps it would be useful to reflect on different ways that one might conceive of life after death. Annihilation. One possibility is that a person who dies ceases to exist. This appears to have been a popular notion in the Greco-Roman world, as evidenced by a number of inscriptions on tombstones that bemoan the brevity of life which ends in nonexistence. One of the most widely used Latin inscriptions was so popular that it was normally abbreviated (like our own R.I.P. for “Rest in Peace”) as N.F.N.S.N.C.: “I was [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:53-04:00September 15th, 2012|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Paul and His Letters|

The Need for Context

I AM NOW REVISING THE NEW TESTAMENT PORTION OF MY BIBLE INTRODUCTION, AND THOUGHT THAT SOME OF THE SECTIONS IN IT MAY BE OF BROADER INTEREST. AND SO I WILL POST A FEW OF (WHAT STRIKE ME AS) THE MORE INTERESTING PARTS HERE ON THE BLOG OVER THE NEXT WEEK OR SO. THE FOLLOWING IS HOW I BEGIN THIS SECOND SECTION. BEFORE THIS PORTION ARE AN OPENING EIGHT CHAPTERS DEVOTED TO THE HEBREW BIBLE. THEN THERE IS THIS TRANSITIONAL CHAPTER, FOLLOWED BY FIVE ON THE NT. TO GET GEARED UP FOR THE NT, I START AS FOLLOWS. THIS WILL SOUND FAMILIAR TO YOU IF YOU’VE READ SOME OF MY OTHER BOOKS ********************************************************************************************************************** Throughout our study so far we have seen why it is important to know the context of a biblical writing if we want to interpret it correctly. You cannot understand what Isaiah meant when he said that “a young woman has conceived and will bear a son, and you will call him Immanuel,” without knowing that he spoke these words in the context [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:53-04:00September 14th, 2012|Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

An Interlude: My Other CIA

This post is a one-day interlude from my posting on the textual problem of Luke’s passage on the “bloody sweat,” which was a sidetrack from my postings on problems I had with the NRSV, which were a sidetrack from my postings on my relationship with Bruce Metzger, which got started by a question about how he reacted to my loss of faith, a question I have not yet answered. This post is irrelevant to all that, but if I don’t post on it now, I never will. So, this blog is not the one and only Christianity in Antiquity in my life. The other is a reading group that I host once a month, of graduate students and faculty (mainly graduate students) from UNC and Duke, which I started, I don’t know 15 years or more ago, and that I called Christianity in Antiquity (CIA) because I thought I would be clever. My self-deception on such points, obviously, has still not worn off. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:40-04:00September 7th, 2012|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Another Take on Jesus’ Existence

Some readers have objected to my insistence that New Testament scholars, on the whole, do not take seriously the claims of the mythicists that Jesus never existed. I have always stressed that Jesus' existence is known (and can be demonstrated) by thousands of New Testament scholars. But I have also always stressed that scholarly consensus on this issue is not in itself *evidence* (my detractors among the mythicists seem to overlook this little point, when they claim that I argue that since the consensus says something it must be true; that's not my view at all!). At the same time, it is worthwhile knowing what the experts say -- whether talking about the age of our universe (13.8 billion years; but I wouldn't be able to calculate that myself); about the theory of evolution (Hey, it's just a *theory*! yes, but so too is the "theory" of gravity!!); about the forgery of the Hitler diaries; or about anything else that involves expertise. At the same time, it is worthwhile in all these cases to know what [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:39-04:00August 30th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum|

Bible Intro: Nearing the finish line

I am happy to say that I have nearly finished writing the rough draft of my Introduction to the Bible; those of you who have been on the blog for a while know: this is a college level textbook (so, written for 19 year olds) for a one-semester course on the Bible, Genesis to Revelation. I’ve actually enjoyed doing it. In preparation I spent a couple of years teaching the Introduction to the Hebrew Bible course at UNC, refreshing my memory on the Jewish Scriptures and getting back abreast of scholarship, after I had not done much in Hebrew Bible for 25 years. And I realized, once I started getting into it, that some of the “knowledge” I had 25 years ago was given me by professors nearing retirement age who were, as a result, giving me information that was at that time 25 years out of date. So, well, I was 50 years behind the times. Not good. But I retaught myself Hebrew – which was fun; I’m still reading a bit every day. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:24-04:00August 15th, 2012|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Teaching Christianity|

Autobiographical. Metzger and Me: Finishing the Dissertation

SOME MORE ON MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER, ON FINISHING THE DISSERTATION Different dissertation advisors have different approaches to supervising a dissertation. Some are extremely hands on, to the point of working over every thought and every sentence. Not too many are like that, because if they were, they would never do anything else with their life. Plus, the idea is for the student to figure it out and get good at it. That takes some trial and error. Other advisors go for the big picture and like to talk over the big ideas. Others basically don’t give a rip how the dissertation is coming along – they want to see it at the end, and when it’s done, they’ll tell the student whether it’s good enough or not. Others … well, there are lots of other approaches. Sometime I’ll explain mine, which is not quite any of the above. Metzger took an approach that other students may have found frustrating, but that was absolutely perfect for me. He basically let me do my own [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:24-04:00August 14th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Reader’s Questions|

A Forger Who Was Caught. The Case of Salvian, Part 2

THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY PREVIOUS POST ON SALVIAN, THE ONE CHRISTIAN FORGER THAT WE KNOW WAS CAUGHT IN THE ACT. I INCLUDE THE TAIL END OF THE PREVIOUS POST AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS ONE FOR CONTEXT, BUT YOU MAY WANT TO REREAD THE WHOLE THING ITSELF. THIS, AGAIN, IS DRAWN FROM MY FORTHCOMING BOOK FORGERY AND COUNTERFORGERY. ************************************************************************************************************************ Given this confession of motivation, what Salvian claims next may seem a bit surprising, if not down-right duplicitous. Why did he choose the name Timothy in particular? Readers naturally took the name to refer to Paul’s Pastoral companion, hence Salonius’s distraught reaction. But in clear tension with his earlier assertion that an unknown person would not be accepted as an authoritative source, Salvian claims that he chose the name purely for of its symbolic associations. Just as the evangelist Luke wrote to “Theophilus” because he wrote “for the love of God,” so too the author of this treatise wrote as “Timothy,” that is, “for the honor of God.” In other words, he chose the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:23-04:00August 11th, 2012|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity|

A Christian Forger Caught in the Acts

Next month I will be giving a keynote address at a conference dealing with ancient pseudepigrapha at the University of Laval, in Quebec City. I have recently been discussing the topic (of ancient authors falsely claiming to be a famous person) on the blog in relation to the letter of James, and as you know, it was the subject of my monography Forgery and Counterforgery ten years ago, and my spin-off popular account Forged. I haven't worked seriously on the problem since then. But now, because of this upcoming lecture, I'm having to think about it long and hard again, a decade later. Lots of scholars simply don't (or can't?) believe that ancient people -- especially Christians, but others as well -- would lie about their identities. It's not that these scholars doubt that there are lots and lots of pseudepigrapha out there, Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian. There are. But these scholars don't think that the authors were doing anything duplicitous. There are different ways scholars have made this argument, but the basic line [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:23-04:00August 9th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha, Forgery in Antiquity|

Peter as Literate? Part 2

THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY POST FROM YESTERDAY ON WHETHER PETER COULD HAVE WRITTEN 1 PETER, BASED ON THE QUESTION OF HIS POSSIBLE LITERACY. READ THE FIRST POST FIRST, OR THIS ONE WON'T MAKE AS MUCH SENSE! In pursuing this line of inquiry, we might ask what we can know about Peter as a person, prior to his becoming a disciple of Jesus. The answer is that we do not know much at all. The Gospels are consistent only in portraying him as a fisherman from the village of Capernaum in rural Galilee. We can assume that since he was a common laborer, he was not from the landed aristocracy; and since he was from rural Galilee, he would have spoken Aramaic. What can we say about his home “town” of Capernaum? The historical and social insignificance of the place can be seen by the fact that it is not mentioned in any source, including the Hebrew Bible, prior to the writings of the New Testament. In the Gospels it is portrayed as a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:23-04:00August 7th, 2012|Book Discussions, Catholic Epistles|

Peter as Literate?

IN RESPONSE TO MY POSTS ON SECRETARIES AND THE BOOK OF 1 PETER, SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE RAISED THE QUESTION OF WHETHER PETER WAS HIMSELF LITERATE (ABLE TO READ, OR MORE SIGNIFICANTLY, TO WRITE). THIS IS THE FIRST PART OF WHAT I SAY IN MY BOOK FORGERY AND COUNTERFORGERY; THE SECOND PART WILL BE IN THE NEXT POST. ************************************************************************************************************************ In his now-classic study of ancient literacy, William Harris gave compelling reasons for thinking that at the best of times in antiquity only 10% or so of the population was able to read [Ancient Literacy; Harvard University Press, 1989]. By far the highest portion of readers was located in urban settings. Widespread literacy like that enjoyed throughout modern societies requires certain cultural and historical forces to enact policies of near universal, or at least extensive, education of the masses. Prior to the industrial revolution, such a thing was neither imagined nor desired. As Meir Bar Ilan notes: “literacy does not emerge in a vacuum but rather from social and historical circumstances.” Moreover, far fewer people in antiquity [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:23-04:00August 6th, 2012|Book Discussions, Catholic Epistles|

Ancient Secretaries (Part 2)

This is a continuation of my previous post on secretaries in the ancient world, drawn from my forthcoming book Forgery and Counterforgery. In the earlier post I talked about the use of secretaries in taking dictation and doing light copy-editing, based on the findings of the full study of Randall Richards. The discussion is relevant to the writings of the New Testament: could 1 Peter, or Ephesians, or any of the other pseudepigraphical writings of the new testament have been produced by secretaries rather than their reputed authors? ****************************** It is Richards‘ third and fourth categories that are particularly germane to the questions of early Christian forgery. What is the evidence that secretaries were widely used, or used at all, as co-authors of letters or as Ersatz composers? If there is any evidence that secretaries sometimes joined an author in creating a letter, Richards has failed to find or produce it. The one example he considers involves the relationship of Cicero and Tiro, cited earlier by Gordon Bahr as evidence for co-authorship. In Bahr’s words [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:23-04:00August 5th, 2012|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, New Testament Manuscripts|

Ancient Secretaries (Part 1)

I have received some comments and emails about my claims about Silvanus as a secretary (or rather, NOT as a secretary) for the book of 1 Peter, and realized it would help if I could give some more detail about what we know about secretaries in the ancient world. The following is from an excursus in my forthcoming Forgery and Counterforgery; it will come in two parts, the first today and the second, hopefully, tomorrow. If you've read my book Forged, the substance of what follows will be familiar; this is the slightly more whomped up version of what I discuss there. ************************************************************************************************************************ Now that we have explored six of the Deutero-Pauline epistles, we are in a position to consider the hypothesis widely invoked by advocates of authenticity to explain how a letter allegedly by an author should differ so radically from other writings he produced. The notion that early Christian authors used secretaries who altered the writing style and contributed to the contents of a writing– thereby creating the anomalies that arouse the critics‘ [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:23-04:00August 3rd, 2012|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters|

Forgery. Another Deceived Deceiver (Part 2)

HERE'S THE SECOND HALF OF WHAT I STARTED TO POST YESTERDAY: THE IRONIES OF THE APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTIONS (A FOURTH CENTURY BOOK CLAIMING TO BE WRITTEN BY THE APOSTLES THREE HUNDRED YEARS EARLIER ); DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE GREEK -- IT MAKES SENSE WITHOUT READING IT. MY POINT IN THIS BIT IS THE IRONY OF IT ALL. The alleged authors – the apostles of Christ, including Paul and James -- claim that the books of the New Testament were theirs: ἡμέτερα δέ, τοῦτ’ ἔστι τῆς καινῆς διαθήκης (8.47.85). And so the author gives a list of which books those are, a list that includes all of the books that eventually became the New Testament, with the exception of the book of Revelation. Strikingly, after listing the Gospels and the letters of Paul, James, John, Jude, and Peter, the author indicates that the New Testament is also to include the two letters of Clement and, to cap it all off, the Apostolic Constitutions themselves. The list ends with “our Acts of the Apostles” αἱ Πράψεις ἡμῶν τῶν [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:23-04:00August 1st, 2012|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Forgery. Another Deceived Deceiver (Part 1)

ANOTHER EXCERPT FROM MY FORTHCOMING SCHOLARLY DISCUSSION OF FORGERY AND COUNTERFORGERY, WHERE IN THE INTRODUCTION I CONTINUE MY ANECDOTES OF FORGERIES THAT CONDEMN FORGERIES AND DECEIVERS WHO GET DECEIVED, THIS TIME BY LOOKING AT A CHRISTIAN EXAMPLE (SEE MY EARLIER POST ON THE DUPED HERACLIDES) This ironic phenomenon has its rough parallels in the later Christian tradition. To begin with, we might look at a work universally recognized as pseudepigraphic, the late fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, a so-called “church order” allegedly written by none other than the apostles of Jesus (hence its name), but in reality produced by someone simply claiming to be the apostolic band, living three hundred years after they had been laid to rest in their respective tombs. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don't belong -- JOIN!! We will be considering other aspects of this text in a later chapter. For now it is enough to note that the book represents an edited composite of three earlier documents still extant independently, the third-century Didascalia [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:23-04:00July 31st, 2012|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Forgery and Deceived Deceivers

I mentioned in my previous blog that I am reading through the page proofs of my scholarly book Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. And I suggested that I might give a few extracts to give some idea of what the book looks like. Much of the book is hard hitting scholarship that only inveterate philologists could love (or like). I can give a taste in later posts, if anyone's interested. But I start off on a light note, in part to get people interested (even scholars have to be interested!). I open with the following anecdote. If you've read my popular book Forged, the final part will sound familiar. This is how I would (and do) do the same bit for a more scholarly audience. (I have not included the footnotes here) ************************************************************************************************************************ Heraclides Ponticus was one of the great literati of the classical age. As a young man from aristocratic roots he left his native Pontus to study philosophy in Athens under Plato, Speusippus, and eventually, while [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:23-04:00July 30th, 2012|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

So Much For THAT Idea….

My plan over the next three weeks was to write the seven chapters of my Bible Introduction. The best laid plans.... On the theme of "life sometimes interferes" I was presented yesterday, to my chagrin, with two tasks that require my attention, right away. Both of them unpleasant. Ugh. As I have indicated on this blog, I have a couple of books in the publication pipeline. One is The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, which I am co-editing with my friend Michael Holmes (it's the second edition; the first edition came out in 1995 in honor of Bruce Metzger; it is being published by E. J. Brill in the Netherlands). This book consists of a collection of essays on every major aspect of New Testament textual criticism, for scholars and their students who are already abreast of the basic issues in the field. The other is my scholarly version of the forgery book, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (being published by Oxford University Press). As fate [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:22-04:00July 29th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Public Forum|

Resurrection and Resuscitation

The following is just a small chunk that I've written up for my Bible Introduction on the idea of "resurrection" -- in relationship to other views of afterlife in the Bible. It's short, but it's the last sentence that is very much worth thinking about (most people haven't thought about it; I know I never did, until fairly recently). ************************************************************************************************************** Many readers of the Bible are surprised to learn that the ideas of the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible are not closely related to what most people think today. The idea that after you die, your soul goes either to heaven or hell (or even purgatory) is not rooted in the Jewish Scriptures. The few passages that refer to an afterlife in the Hebrew Bible assume that after death, a person goes to “Sheol.” That is not the Hebrew equivalent of “hell” – a place of punishment for the wicked. It is the place that everyone goes, good or evil. It is sometimes spoken of as a place of rest (remember how Samuel was not [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:09-04:00July 25th, 2012|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Reflections on Books

I’m off to the airport in three hours, to spend the rest of the summer in London. As I think I mentioned before, Sarah is a Brit – grew up in London – and her family is all there. We have a flat in Wimbledon, and usually spend six weeks or so there during the summer, and sundry other times throughout the year. Sarah this year is teaching the “Duke in London” summer program, which is all theater: they study a play in class during the day, then go see it performed that evening. Really interesting and invigorating, but a *lot* of work (for Sarah). She’s been there for the past two weeks already. I have finished the eight chapters of my Bible Intro that deal with the Hebrew Bible; after this the book will include be a transitional chapter into the New Testament (dealing with Greco-Roman world, Judaism in the period, and so on), then five chapters on the NT, and a final chapter on the canon and text of both testaments. I hope [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:09-04:00July 16th, 2012|Book Discussions|

Wisdom as God’s Consort in the Beginning

I'm pleased to say that I met my goal of getting the eight chapters on the Hebrew Bible for my Bible Introduction written now, just in time for me to fly outta here. I head to London for the rest of the summer on Monday. But I will keep up with the blog from there! Below is just a short little "box" that I include in my discussion of the book of Proverbs. *********************************************************************************************************************** Box 1.2: Woman Wisdom as God’s Consort? We have seen that in ancient Israel Yahweh was sometimes thought to have a divine consort, his “Asherah.” This was never accepted by the strict henotheists who wrote the historical and prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, but in Proverbs, a book of Wisdom, there is a passage that some interpreters have thought represents a kind of modified or “tamed” view of Yahweh and his divine female companion from eternity past. Here she is not Asherah, but Wisdom herself, shown to be speaking in Proverbs 8: FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:08-04:00July 14th, 2012|Book Discussions, Early Christian Doctrine, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

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